The Hole (2010)

Directed by: Joe Dante | 90 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Teri Polo, Quinn Lord, John DeSantis, Douglas Chapman, Mark Pawson, Peter Shinkoda, Jonathan Bruce, Merritt Patterson, Ali Cobrin, Chelsea Ricketts, Chord Overstreet, Bruce Dern

If your name is Joe Dante, you have a reputation to uphold when it comes to horror. The director caused a furore in the seventies and eighties with genre classics such as ‘Piranha’, ‘The Howling’ and ‘Gremlins’, but became less often heard in the course of the nineties. After the flop of ‘Looney Tunes: Back in Action’ in 2003, he disappeared from the big screen, only to make a comeback seven years later with ‘The Hole 3D’, a horror film for young moviegoers and their parents. Fans can be pleased: Dante has returned to the old base and proves that he has not forgotten the trade despite his long absence. Yet ‘The Hole’ does not provide the spectacular comeback we secretly hoped for. The film doesn’t bore, but it doesn’t surprise either; it’s family horror without any sharp edges, made for a generation that no longer cares.

Like so many horror movies, ‘The Hole’ starts with a move. In the basement of their new home, brothers Dane and Lucas discover a bottomless pit from which strange shapes emerge. Girl next door Julie says the hole is a gateway to hell, “and that’s really cool!” This sets the tone of the film. These teens don’t let anything fool them, not even their worst fears. Hats off to the main characters, but by casually shaking off childhood traumas incarnate, they take the sting out of the film. If they don’t care, why should the viewer care? Disappointingly, it also quickly becomes clear where the story is headed and how the kids can deal with the apparitions that haunt them. The race has already started halfway through the film. The only scene that has impact is the denouement, when Dane finds herself in a nightmarish version of the house where he was abused by his father as a small child.

Despite the predictable and quite bloodless story ‘The Hole’ is still quite entertaining. Visually, the film is well put together, with 3D effects that come into their own, especially in the finale, and scares that are not innovative, but are effective. Under the guise of ‘better stolen than badly invented’, Dante borrows elements of success from his own work and that of others, such as an eccentric ex-resident who, for several reasons, is reminiscent of the army fanatic from ‘The Burbs’, a toy clown who life comes and a girl who moves around as if she just crawled out of a Japanese television. For the young target group, tricks à la ‘Child’s Play’ and ‘Ringu’ are new, older horror fans have seen it all before. They will remember with nostalgia the black humor and social criticism of ‘Gremlins’ and the unsavory werewolf transformations of ‘The Howling’. ‘The Hole 3D’ is certainly not a bad movie, but it is too tame to loosen the tongues. You can expect more from Joe Dante. Better luck next time?